What actually will colonies do?

[Pthigrivi]

36 minutes ago, SolarAdmiral said:

As for colony management, we've seen four big things that are clues. 1, colonies will need power and maybe lots of it to make use of those big reactors. 2, colonies will need food, or something from those greenhouses. 3, colonies will have a population of kerbals, to make use of all those habitat and housing parts. 4 colonies can refine materials, if only fuels.

Okay so your post absolutely slaps, but let's delve into this particular section especially as it relates to @t_v's post because @regex brings up a critical question about gravity wells. There is one huge advantage to building on the surface and close to the point of raw harvesting that KSP1's resource system ignores: in reality raw resources should be much, much heavier than refined products. If you harvest 10t of regolith you really should only be pulling maybe 1t of fuel out of it. Probably less. The byproduct could be dumped or stored for some other use. That means the more processing you can do closer to the source the less you're spending in transportation fuel to deliver the end-product to where it's needed. So yeah! Absolutely! You could harvest raw ore on the Mun, lug it all the way to your LKO station and process it there, or you could put the processing unit on the harvester itself, which means you're lugging the refinery all the way from the Munar surface and back, or maybe more smartly you'd just put the refinery on the Mun, drive a rover over to the deposit, and only transport the end-products to LKO for final assembly. The same principle would apply to asteroids. Do you want to lug the refinery to the asteroid? or the asteroid to the refinery? And if we're being fair they should really literally use straight dV, m/s as the organizing balance principle. If it takes 3400 m/s to deliver cargo to LKO orbit from Kerbin and 2500 d/v to deliver cargo from Minmus' surface to LKO that ratio should inform the upgrade costs for producing materials at KSC. 

Edited December 15, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[SolarAdmiral]

Exactly, that's what I'm really hoping for. Some big heavy bulky ore that can be refined down into some nice pure metal ingots. Dump the slag and you have a much lighter pure product. 

 

I'm hoping there might even be a simple set of materials. Not as detailed as factorio, but a smaller version of that. Where there's a small flowchart of materials. Rock becomes silicon becomes electronics, ore becomes metal becomes alloy, each step cutting mass by as much as 90%. And like you said, maybe some of the byproducts can be used elsewhere. 

[regex]

1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

1 hour ago, regex said:

I don't want to cheat, I want to play the game.

This is just a matter of perspective. Sometimes I like to play Factorio by just turning the biters off because I want to relax and take my time with really optimizing things. I don't consider that cheating. It's just a way to play.

Off-topic, in light of your other post here RE: play style, I want to point out that this absolutely is about perspective. You don't consider that cheating when you do it, I consider it cheating when I do it. Do you see the perspective? There is no judgement of you there, it's all about perspective. I used such "strong" language because I was being told to do something in the future that I consider anathema to how I enjoy the current game (several times I might add, after pushing back).

31 minutes ago, SolarAdmiral said:

Now, some parts might be so large they have to be in a permanent colony, on the surface or in orbit.

Are we getting orbital colonies or just orbital construction yards? Or have they made any distinction about that yet?

Personally I'm not particularly keen on having structures built in situ, I'd prefer to launch and move everything into place myself.

[SolarAdmiral]

32 minutes ago, regex said:

Are we getting orbital colonies or just orbital construction yards? Or have they made any distinction about that yet?

Personally I'm not particularly keen on having structures built in situ, I'd prefer to launch and move everything into place myself.

The orbitals have definitely been called colonies at some points. It sounds like the system will be similar. And the orbitals they've shown off definitely have a lot more stuff on them than just the construction yard. So I think it is safe to say the orbitals are full colonies not just construction yards.

Now, the one thing we haven't seen is an orbital version of the fuel refinery buildings. So it hasn't been confirmed if you can also build refineries like that in orbit also. So maybe the orbital ones don't have all the options that can be built on the ground. Maybe there are options that can be built in orbit and not on the ground. But I don't see why many things would be restricted to one or the other. Maybe certain processes can only be done in orbit or on the ground but I'd hope that is the exception and not the rule.

[TheTennesseeFireman]

1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

Okay so your post absolutely slaps, but let's delve into this particular section especially as it relates to @t_v's post because @regex brings up a critical question about gravity wells. There is one huge advantage to building on the surface and close to the point of raw harvesting that KSP1's resource system ignores: in reality raw resources should be much, much heavier than refined products. If you harvest 10t of regolith you really should only be pulling maybe 1t of fuel out of it. Probably less. The byproduct could be dumped or stored for some other use. That means the more processing you can do closer to the source the less you're spending in transportation fuel to deliver the end-product to where it's needed. So yeah! Absolutely! You could harvest raw ore on the Mun, lug it all the way to your LKO station and process it there, or you could put the processing unit on the harvester itself, which means you're lugging the refinery all the way from the Munar surface and back, or maybe more smartly you'd just put the refinery on the Mun, drive a rover over to the deposit, and only transport the end-products to LKO for final assembly. The same principle would apply to asteroids. Do you want to lug the refinery to the asteroid? or the asteroid to the refinery? And if we're being fair they should really literally use straight dV, m/s as the organizing balance principle. If it takes 3400 m/s to deliver cargo to LKO orbit from Kerbin and 2500 d/v to deliver cargo from Minmus' surface to LKO that ratio should inform the upgrade costs for producing materials at KSC. 

So this brings up an interesting point that I’m guessing may have been addressed elsewhere, but exactly what aspects of colony gameplay will require Kerbals? I’m too lazy to look up exactly what has been confirmed, but it would appear that autonomous resource gathering missions can be done fully unmanned. Will refineries operate the same way? Presumably you’ll need Kerbals for rocket construction/launches, but orbital construction might be a more efficient choice. And if they’re just there to improve efficiency, that’s not an real incentive in a game with time warp. So what’s the reason we should set up a planetary colony instead of a bunch of drone missions feeding orbital hubs?

[t_v]

48 minutes ago, regex said:

Ground-based infrastructure.

It's not. It's on the ground at the bottom of a gravity well. Big difference.

Right, I think I see the misunderstanding. First, colonies can be in space, not just on the ground. That has been confirmed pretty much since the announce trailer, with all of the orbital colony stuff we have seen. Second, I’m pretty sure that anywhere you could set up a ground-based colony, you could do a space-based one instead. With a big enough ship, I hope you can put down enough fully completed modules to kick-start a new orbital hub, just like you can fully deliver a space station to a destination. You can then collect resources like with any other colony, from asteroids or nearby celestial bodies. 
 

Third, I’m not going to judge your play style, but there is functionally nothing different between surface and orbital colonies. Colony is here, resources are there, you decide how to get them. Instead of rendezvousing you are driving in, and instead of undocking you are taking off. If that doesn’t appeal to you and you would rather only deal with the orbiting part is space travel, then that is totally fine. I sincerely hope that the game is reasonably completable without needing to put a single colony module on the ground (or in orbit for that matter) because that would mean the variety of playstyles available would increase significantly. Also, with an interstellar ship, you should be able to reach any destination from anywhere else, so if all resources are really available and free from Kerbin (which I doubt), you can always plant flags on every celestial body without a single colony outside of Kerbin SOI. Problem solved!

[regex]

54 minutes ago, t_v said:

I sincerely hope that the game is reasonably completable without needing to put a single colony module on the ground (or in orbit for that matter) because that would mean the variety of playstyles available would increase significantly.

This is honestly what I'd really like to see, and what I'm worried about. That's the problem with an early access like they've shown us; I have no idea how the progression gameplay is going to turn out and if it ends up being a management/optimization sim then I've effectively wasted $50 USD.

[Drakenred65]

For me a minor frustration is contracts. I hate some of the more fidly ones (fly part x to altitude y at z speed, you may or may not  need to test it….) and Idiotic ones like test landing gear in orbit…..eh?

 

 

[Bej Kerman]

51 minutes ago, regex said:

This is honestly what I'd really like to see, and what I'm worried about. That's the problem with an early access like they've shown us; I have no idea how the progression gameplay is going to turn out and if it ends up being a management/optimization sim then I've effectively wasted $50 USD.

If there was a good time to be paranoid about something the devs said wouldn't happen, it was when colonies were still on the drawing board.

[Guest]

9 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

There is one huge advantage to building on the surface and close to the point of raw harvesting that KSP1's resource system ignores: in reality raw resources should be much, much heavier than refined products. If you harvest 10t of regolith you really should only be pulling maybe 1t of fuel out of it. Probably less.

This.

I don't think colonies should be mandatory, but sure enough, KSP2 should keep well in mind the reason they make sense. Other than the said 10 to 1 ratio between raw and refined resources, I'd add another 10x increase in productivity in manned refineries and drilling operations over automated ones.
I'd also like the interest points on a planet / moon surface being spread around and not all grouped in the same place so you're forced to use long range rockets/planes/trucks to reach the resources instead of just plopping down a magic straw from the colony itself.

Having to deal with the slag generated by the refining process is another good mechanic, especially for orbital refineries, if you have 9 tons of waste for every ton of metal you get it starts to make sense refining your ore where you can just store the waste in a big pile outside.

I don't want colonies to play Factorio or Surviving Mars I want colonies as destinations and hubs for dozens of smaller missions required to keep them running.

Every problem a colony has should be always solvable by launching a new rocket and setting up a new supply route.

 

This isn't forcing base building or resource gathering in yet another game. Base building and in-situ resource gathering has been part of every serious space exploration program ever since before it was a trend in videogames, probably even before the existence of videogames. 

[Vl3d]

1 hour ago, Master39 said:

Every problem a colony has should be always solvable by launching a new rocket and setting up a new supply route.

I think you should be able to also solve problems using better colony design and tech. We're not building just rockets anymore in KSP2.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Vl3d said:

I think you should be able to also solve problems using better colony design and tech. We're not building just rockets anymore in KSP2.

KSP is not a colony sim, no matter how hard it tries it will begin to alienate its public long before coming even close to games like Surviving Mars, Stationeers or ONI.

And this whole thread is proof of that.

[Vl3d]

6 minutes ago, Master39 said:

KSP is not a colony sim

It's not just this or just that. It's also a colony building game. Some players will probably spend more time designing buildings and cities than building rockets. I'm super excited about it!

[SolarAdmiral]

50 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

It's not just this or just that. It's also a colony building game. Some players will probably spend more time designing buildings and cities than building rockets. I'm super excited about it!

Absolutely. And I'm super excited for the transport and logistics system. I want to build colonies everywhere and link them up with the most efficient interplanetary bulk cargo hauling I can. 

[Guest]

41 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

It's also a colony building game. Some players will probably spend more time designing buildings and cities than building rockets.

Those people may have more fun playing dedicated games, or modding their game.

And it doesn't mean the game shouldn't have colony mechanics at all, just that those should have a rocket or a craft of some kind in a significant position of the game-loop.

The examples made above are good, if you don't have places with all the resources conveniently grouped, and the refining removes 9/10 of the weight of the raw material, it means that your "Reource deposit => raw material => refinery => crafting parts buildings" doesn't happen all in one place, becoming more of a "design the specific rocket to connect this mining outpost to this base" rather than a Factorio like placement of conveyor belts or pipes inside the same base/colony.
 

I look forward to colonies too, but not as a thing of their own shoehorned into KSP, but as an excuse to build and pilot more rockets, spaceplanes, landers and rovers.

 

27 minutes ago, Laikanaut said:

In other star systems they would be used to provide new launch and construction facilities. So overall, they are heavily dependent on interstellar features, and have little use outside of this.

Not at all, I bet a lot of people can't wait to get rid of the "every mission begins and ends on Kerbin" shackle.  I want to lead my first Eve missions from the Mun, start the first Jool exploration mission from a Duna Spaceport and have the first Eve return veichle, an electric plane / rocket hybrid, being assembled and tested in a colony on Laythe.

I learned how to hit the KSC on rehentry every time and land on the runway, what about a reusable spaceplane lander landing at a polar colony on Duna?

 

Before being a working gameplay mechanic colonies, bases and stations are destinations for our missions, not just a required step to go interstellar.

 

3 minutes ago, SolarAdmiral said:

Absolutely. And I'm super excited for the transport and logistics system. I want to build colonies everywhere and link them up with the most efficient interplanetary bulk cargo hauling I can. 

As I said, every problem solved with a rocket/craft. Not factorioing everything by deploying a couple of drills from the colony itself, but having all the infrastructure spread around and rockets to build to automate all the transfers.

All the logistics and management part should happen out of the colonies, between different outposts and stations, not with conveyor belts and pipes inside the colony itself.

[SolarAdmiral]

13 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

The same principle would apply to asteroids. Do you want to lug the refinery to the asteroid? or the asteroid to the refinery?

You know what else I just realized I want more than anything. I hope we can also put all the orbital colony stuff on a suitably large ship. Maybe even with smaller more portable but less efficient versions. Including the refining and even the construction yard. I want to build the mothership from homeworld. Go to another system with a mobile mining base refinery and ship construction yard all in one.

[Vl3d]

22 minutes ago, SolarAdmiral said:

I'm super excited for the transport and logistics system. I want to build colonies everywhere and link them up with the most efficient interplanetary bulk cargo hauling I can. 

Something really hard to do but amazing would be an interstellar logistics network using transports that link colonies built on Oort cloud objects. Meaning you jump from asteroid to asteroid and from stellar debris cloud to stellar debris cloud.

This way you don't need huge interstellar ships to get anywhere. You just need a couple thousand years.

Edited December 15, 2022 by Vl3d

[SolarAdmiral]

14 minutes ago, Master39 said:

 

The examples made above are good, if you don't have places with all the resources conveniently grouped, and the refining removes 9/10 of the weight of the raw material, it means that your "Reource deposit => raw material => refinery => crafting parts buildings" doesn't happen all in one place, becoming more of a "design the specific rocket to connect this mining outpost to this base" rather than a Factorio like placement of conveyor belts or pipes inside the same base/colony.

Hey totally agreed. I couldn't figure out how to put it in words like this but you nailed it. Ksp is absolutely about rockets (and rovers to an extent) not conveyors.

 

It would be great if some materials need two or three base resources to build. And have them spread out over a wide area, maybe with the best deposits separated on different planets.

To make steel, carbon and iron have to be mined on opposite sides of a huge crater. Or building electronics from copper and silicon mined on two neighboring moons.

Obviously with the total number of resources limited to something manageable. I'm not expecting to see dozens of different materials.

[t_v]

1 hour ago, SolarAdmiral said:

You know what else I just realized I want more than anything. I hope we can also put all the orbital colony stuff on a suitably large ship. Maybe even with smaller more portable but less efficient versions. Including the refining and even the construction yard. I want to build the mothership from homeworld. Go to another system with a mobile mining base refinery and ship construction yard all in one.

I pretty much see this being the case. The reason is, we know that before colonies can build their own modules to do manufacturing and processing, you need to bring the modules in. This means there must be a transportable module that coordinates repeated missions, one that can manufacture new parts that can’t be transported, and one that can do ISRU. Without these modules being transported, it would be impossible to start growing a colony, so I think that you will see those parts in the game

Edited December 15, 2022 by t_v

[Pthigrivi]

15 hours ago, regex said:

Off-topic, in light of your other post here RE: play style, I want to point out that this absolutely is about perspective. You don't consider that cheating when you do it, I consider it cheating when I do it. Do you see the perspective? There is no judgement of you there, it's all about perspective. I used such "strong" language because I was being told to do something in the future that I consider anathema to how I enjoy the current game (several times I might add, after pushing back).

Were you here for the whole sandbox discussion we had a couple months back? There was some really interesting feedback related to how gameplay opt-in/opt-out toggles are presented and when players felt like the only way to play the way they liked was to "cheat". I tend to agree that hacking things in with codes or debug is always going to feel like cheating, but if you present those same options as custom sandbox/custom progression toggles folks don't seem nearly so irked. 

The question for me vis a vis colonies is what the default experience should look like--leaving my personal preferences aside as much as a person can. I still think $60 is a steep price for KSP1 reskin and the devs are absolutely right to really expand the kinds of gameplay KSP offers. They should be thinking not about people recreating the experience they've had over the last 10 years or what Pthigrivi or Regex want as individuals, but whats going to open up another 10 years of creative design. Like a lot of folks have pointed out colonies and crafting and a more dynamic approach to resources doesn't just add some city building elements as an add on, it radically changes the kinds of vessels and mission profiles players can put together and opens up the creative design space. You could have a refinery in Minmus orbit, and send a harvester down to the surface and back with ice-rich regolith and set that as a repeatable supply run. Then you could have a smelting rover on the Mun that gets sky craned from deposit to deposit or have the crane deliver the processed metals to orbit. Then you could have a low thrust, high-isp freighter that shuttles the fuel and metal between your Minmus station and your Munar mining operation. Now you can build interplanetary vessels from scratch much higher in the gravity well and use close flybys of Kerbin as an initial slingshot. Each one of those vessels plus any connected stations or colonies are their own unique design problems with new behaviors and flight profiles. And because each of these runs can be made automatically repeatable all you're really worried about is that first demonstration run as unique experience. Maybe every once in a while you can go back to your Minmus station and do some expanding, rejigger your processing rates, but if the intermediates are relatively simple this wouldn't take up any more than 5% of your time. 

Edited December 15, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[regex]

1 hour ago, Master39 said:

The examples made above are good, if you don't have places with all the resources conveniently grouped, and the refining removes 9/10 of the weight of the raw material, it means that your "Reource deposit => raw material => refinery => crafting parts buildings" doesn't happen all in one place, becoming more of a "design the specific rocket to connect this mining outpost to this base" rather than a Factorio like placement of conveyor belts or pipes inside the same base/colony.

This right here is the stuff I was hoping I wouldn't see, tedium and repetition in service to ... what? Forcing the player to build colonies due to absolutely punishing inefficiencies, optimization loops, turning an exploration game into a pure management sim, regardless of whether I had to fly something to set it up.

If it's all optional then what purpose does it serve? A dev house doesn't create assets only to have them go unused.

[Drakenred65]

Well on earth a lot of the raw resources we extract are oxides of one kind or other, iron ore on earth is largely things like FE3O4. Processing that releases the oxygen, which ends up being a waste product, that is lost in the form of O2 and C02, most ores are contaminated with other material like Chert, and other minerals which is where things like Slag comes from, you get roughly 600 kg of slag from producing 1000 kg of iron, (Globally, depending on the ore and mining techniques used) what fraction of said slag is reusable or re-proccesable varies wildly. One Bauxite source was able to reprocess its tailings into iron then silicates as An experiment in reducing waste extracted, but stoped when they realized that they realized that the waste after three steps contained detectable levels of Thorium Radium and Uranium, but that was not economically recoverable or disposable.

 

[SolarAdmiral]

19 minutes ago, regex said:

This right here is the stuff I was hoping I wouldn't see, tedium and repetition in service to ... what? Forcing the player to build colonies due to absolutely punishing inefficiencies, optimization loops, turning an exploration game into a pure management sim, regardless of whether I had to fly something to set it up.

If it's all optional then what purpose does it serve? A dev house doesn't create assets only to have them go unused.

That would be true if this was factorio or satisfactory and the thing connecting the mines, refineries, and fatories were just converyor belts laid on the ground. But this is KSP and the thing connecting the steps are craft you build and fly. It gives a need to build a craft to serve a purpose, you get to build something to move stuff from point A to point B. It gives a need to build and fly ships that are different from the other ships you fly to explore new places. And it gives you a reason to explore new places to look for the base resources, to build more rockets to explore more places. And to me that's way more fun and interesting than any of the contracts in KSP1. I'd much rather be building ships to move things between my colonies on an ongoing basis than testing a radial decoupler once at a specific altitude and speed.

It's optional because its something people want to do and are looking forward to. And it's optional because not everyone wants to do it. It's optional because some people find it fun and its why they're excited for KSP2 and because others aren't and don't want to bother with it. KSP has never been a game of forcing you to do things, basically the whole game in KSP was optional, you could do what you wanted to and ignore what you didn't. Here, if you like the idea of building colonies and trade routes it's there for you, and a lot of people are looking forward to it. If you don't like it, just build everything on kerbin, plop down the bare minimum off world, and go from there. The "punishment" for not building colonies is playing the game another way. (Playing it another way which you enjoy playing it). Maybe you play science mode instead of 'career' where the resources are unlimited and you don't need to bother with colonies at all. Or you just use rockets launched from kerbin and maybe have to timewarp a little longer to build up enough to build massive ships. Or maybe you adjust a slider for resource generation way up so you don't need to wait as long.

In the end it's a gameplay loop that gives people a reason to build and fly rockets and spacecraft in this game about building and flying rockets and spacecraft.

[Guest]

31 minutes ago, regex said:

tedium and repetition in service to ... what?

Every kind of gameplay loop can be reduced to "tedium and repetition" if you simply don't like it.

If we go that direction I could reply with: "Exploring what? Boring textures and fake polygons?"

 

"I don't like X thus X should be removed or simplified to the point of being useless" won't go far as an argument, and, if that's what you actually want, you should have titled this thread "I don't want colonies".

[Drakenred65]

I’m trying to visualise a game world that has all the boring bits like ground, walls, floors, the color 7f8979(127,137,112)  And so on did not exist….. I suspect you would spend a lot of time tumbling in space……which would be  even more boring.

 

let’s face it, Burger King exists so that places like Olive Garden are places to look foward to.